“Live Every Day As If It Were Your Last”–Steve Jobs

…and one day it really will be. But we don’t know when. So, we’d better be fulfilling our heart’s desire today. Don’t know what that is? Look for it today. No time for people-pleasing, walking on eggshells, doing what others want us to do in life. If we are to make mistakes, let them be our own!

Steve Jobs’ death affected me more than I ever expected. I’ve watched his Stanford University Commencement speech several times. He was a man who did not compromise. His company was never run by committee. Want to water down a dream? Put the control of it in committee. Let others tell you what to do and how to do it. You’ll never recognize your dream when it comes out the other side. And you probably won’t recognize yourself.

You remember the words of Polonius from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night
the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Knowing our “self” takes time and daily commitment. If we’re always busy because “we just have so much to do,” we’ll come to that day–that final day of our lives–living someone else’s dream or even their nightmare. And then what will this gift of life have been for?

In the words of the great Jewish leader, Hillel (30 B.C. -10 C.E): “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?”

As we discover “self,” we discover “Self.” Is there a better time to discover who we really are and what we really can do when directed from that most divine place of beingness within ourselves?

I admired my husband Max before I ever knew that he was Churchill’s Secret Agent during World War II. Max always just did what was in front of him to do. No hesitating or questioning–he just did it. He was his own man, never bending to the will of others. That is not always a popular position to take.

Winston Churchill was that kind of man. He was true to himself. He knew what needed to be done to save the world and didn’t mince words. Often personal spies like Max did what Parliament would never have approved. In Churchill’s own words, let us all “never, never, never quit.”–Linda Ciampoli